Family Structure, Inter-Parental

Relationships and Parenting Practices

in Semi-Urban Central Uganda

Siu Godfrey, Carolyn Namutebi, Flavia Zalwango, Rebecca

Nsubuga, Daniel Wight et al..
Makerere University, Child Health &
Development Centre

SVRI Forum
18th- 21st September, 2017
Rio Brazil

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 Presentation outline

• Background

• Parenting for Respectability Project

• Objective of the current study

• Study methods

• Results
• Sample description
• Family structure and patterns
• Parental relationships
• How inter-parental relationships relate to parenting practices

• Summary of key results 2

 Background

• Poor parenting, particularly in the child’s early years, is a risk

factor for wide range of poor health and development outcomes:

• exposure to forms of child maltreatment, including parental use of

corporal punishment, child neglect, witnessing violence on others in the
family, is associated with poor physical and mental health, and conduct
problems in childhood, and later years in life

• Parenting programmes have been demonstrated to offer early

prevention for these negative outcomes, especially in high
income settings

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 Parenting for Respectability (PfR)
Project 2014-2018
• Underlying principle is to draw on parent’s existing motivation:
concern for family respectability, largely achieved through
children’s good behaviour and respect for parents

• Is a 16 session programme for the early prevention of child

maltreatment and gender based violence, addressing four
processes associated Stage
with such violence:
1: designing and drafting of
programme and manual, and its
• poor parental bondingformative
and child evaluation
attachmentwith six groups
• harsh parenting and corporal punishment
Stage
• differential socialisation 2: large scale pilot with a pre
by gender
• parental conflict and post evaluation with 400 parents

• First part of programme delivered to single sex groups and then

to mixed sex group by a trained facilitator
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 Programme content

Closing ceremony and testimonies

Bonding and attachment: Gender socialisation:
3 sessions 4 sessions

Introduction
and benefits
(to father)

Achieving good behaviour

Spousal relationships:
and respect through
positive discipline: 4 sessions
3 sessions
 Objective

• Report cross-sectional data from a baseline survey that

was conducted for pre-and-post intervention evaluation of
the Parenting for Respectability project

• how inter-parental relationships affect parenting practices

(listening to child, harsh pun (slapping), and provision (of
school fees)

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Methods

• Project/study area: Wakiso,

40kms from Kampala City

• Questionnaires to 400 parents

and 200 of their 10-14 year old
children

• Main measures were validated in

an earlier project

• Descriptive and bivariate

analysis
Results

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 Tab 1: Respondents’ characteristics
(N=381)

Variable Female Male Total

Sex 206 (54.7%) 175 (45.93%) 381

Responded As
Single 140 (67.9%) 109 (43.7%) 249
Couple 66 (32%) 66 (37.7%) 132

Marital status
Married 161 (78%) 161 (78%) 322
Single 12 (5.8%) 2 (1.1%) 14
Widowed 11 (5.3%) 0 (0%) 11
Divorced/separated 22 (10.6%) 12 (6.8%) 34

Education
No School 9 (4.3%) 8 (4.5%) 17
Primary 133 (64.8%) 108 (61.7%) 241
Secondary+ 63 (30.7%) 59 (33.7%) 112
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 Fig 1: Age distribution

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
<=25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56+

Female Male 10
 Fig 2: Family structure - household
composition
300

250 71.5%

200

150

100

50
12.9%
11.8%
3.9% 2.3%
0
With children and With children alone Children partner and children and other Not living with my
partner relatives relatives children

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 Tab 3: Parental relationships -
communication

Variable Female Male P=Value

Discusses Own
Day events & worr 96 (60.3%) 106 (68%)

Day events but not worr 16 (10%) 19 (11.8%)

0.09
Not day events but worr 15 (9.4%) 16 (9.9%)

Not day events and worr 32 (20.1%) 17 (10.5%)

Discuss Partner’s
92 (57.8%) 112 (70%)
Day events & worr
18 (11.3%) 13 (8.1%)
Day events but not worr 0.01
17 (10.69%) 20 (12.5%)
Not day events but worr
32 (20.1%) 15 (9.3%)
Not day events and worr
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 Tab 4: Parent-relationship – fights and
anger/hostility (N=357)

Variable Female Male

Fights
Never 86 (53.7%) 93 (57%)
Often/Sometimes/Rare 74 (46.2%) 68 (42.2)

Anger
Not at all 20 (12.6%) 12 (7.5%)
Yes 138 (87.3%) 147 (92.4%)

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 Tab 5: Parent-relationship – violence
(N=357)

Variable Female Male

Categorised
relationship as

Good, non conflictual 18 (67%) 9 (33%)

Conflictual, not violent 65 (41.4%) 83 (51%)

Violent, involving fights 74 (47.1%) 68 (42.5%)

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 Tab 6: Inter-parental relationships
and parenting practices

Variable Good Conflictual Violent P=Value

Listen 25 (92.5%) 79 (53.7%) 65 (46.1%)

Often 0.000
2 (7.4%) 65 (44.2) 68 (48.2%)
Sometimes/rare/never

Harsh par (slapping)

Never 12 (48%) 60 (40.5%) 34 (23.9%)
0.003
Often/sometimes/rarely 12 (52%) 88 (59.4%) 108 (76%)

Provision (pay sch fees)

Never
0 (0%) 16 (10.9%) 9 (6.3%)
Rarely 3 (11%) 15 (10.2%) 18 (12.7%) 0.003
Sometimes 3 (11%) 21 (14.3%) 46 (32.6%)
Often 18 (66.7) 86 (58.9%) 61 (43.2%)

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 Summary of key results

• Although men appear to be better communicators than

women, parental relationships were generally conflictual

• Parents who report a violent relationships with their

partners are significantly less likely to listen to their
children or provide for them, and significantly more likely
to hit them

• These preliminary findings point to one of the pathways by

which violence may be perpetuated across generations

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 Acknowledgements

•Study participants
•Study team
•SVRI/Oak Foundation for funding

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